


The Ribbon

by iwtv



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, M/M, Pining, but nothing graphic, warnings for abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-22 01:16:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14297583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwtv/pseuds/iwtv
Summary: The small piece of ribbon had once been tied in Lieutenant McGraw’s hair countless times since Thomas had bought it.





	The Ribbon

**Author's Note:**

> By request from tumblr, here are the two drabbles about "the ribbon." :)

PART I : The present

He’d lost it.

Thomas cut off another section of fencing, channeling his anger into his work. James had quit for the day nearly an hour ago. Now, in the dying light, Thomas thought for the hundredth time what could have possibly happened to it. 

He’d always kept it in the bottom of the writing desk James had built for him. He would take it out from time to time when he was feeling nostalgic or melancholy; just to look at it and marvel how it had survived with him through sea voyages, incarceration, and the plantation. The small piece of ribbon had once been tied in Lieutenant McGraw’s hair countless times since Thomas had bought it.

James had used another one the last time he was in Thomas’s bedroom, leaving it on the dresser. Thomas had taken it—faint scent of his lover’s hair gracing the fabric—and tucked it into his pocket.

That was the day they’d taken him. Several hours later he was stripped and assaulted cruelly with buckets of cold water before his “stay” in Bethlem began. They’d given him back his breeches as they shoved him into a cell.

James was calling to him again from the porch. Supper was ready. Thomas cleaned up and ate. Afterwards, as was their evening ritual, they sat side by side in front of the fire. James finally asked.

“You’ve been quiet all day. What’s the matter?”

A kiss followed, placed on the corner of his eye. The soft pressure of James’s lips, wherever they touched, was like a balm. He could not ignore it or the sea-green eyes watching him.

He gingerly sat down his cup of wine and looked into it.

“When I was a lord, I thought there were so many possessions I considered dear to me. You remember some of this. When I was taken to Bedlam, it turned out there was only thing I needed to remind me that hope and love still existed. This will sound silly, but—”

James’s brow furrowed.

“What?” he asked in a silken tone.

Thomas huffed out a sigh.

“I kept your hair ribbon, the one you left the last time…we were together. I’ve had it with me this entire time, and now I’ve lost it.”

James blinked.

“You’ve had it for the past ten years?”

Thomas nodded. James looked to the floor, eyes darting around in his head as he thought.

“Damn,” he muttered. “Give me a moment.”

Before Thomas could inquire why James was up in a flash, moving to their bedroom. He returned a few seconds later. He presented the small piece of black fabric to Thomas. Confusion and relief washed over him as he took it.

“This is it! But how—”

“I found it on the floor, under the table. You had the windows open that day because of the breeze.”

“Good lord,” Thomas muttered. Of course. It had just rained and he’d wanted to let in the fresh air. He’d sat the ribbon down on the top of his desk.

He stroked a thumb over it, elated to have it back. When he looked up James had unshed tears in his eyes.

“I recognized it,” said James, “but I didn’t think it had been mine, of course. You kept it, this entire time,” he said in wonder.

Thomas curled his hand around the ribbon.

“It allowed me to cling to you, no matter what.”

James kissed him with a fierce tenderness then, his palms cupping the sides of Thomas’s face. Thomas breathed him in and the lips and tongue and beard that now tasted like home.

***

PART II: The past

He doesn’t find it until that first night in his cell.

He has no reading material nor anything else to occupy his mind, save for the growing guilt and torturous thoughts of “what ifs” and “should haves” that plague his thoughts of the recent past. He idly touches his pocket seams and feels it there. His fingers pull it out and he inhales sharply. James’s hair ribbon. It’s the softest thing in the room.

*

He spends the first night in Nassau with Miranda tight against him.

He holds her as she curls into him, fingers playing with a lock of his long, dark copper hair. Though they had arrived safely he can sense her fear. Fear of this strange and alien world, so unlike England. It doesn’t concern him much. He’s too busy remembering how Thomas would whisper little praises of how beautiful his hair was in his ear, of how he would always pull his queue out during their intimate moments, letting it spill over his shoulders. Once he is certain she is asleep he lets the tears spill over. By the time they have turned cold and crusted he only feels anger.

*

It becomes a habit to take the ribbon out when he is certain the guards’ eyes are not watching him.

He strokes it with his thumb, sometimes brings it under his nose. He can no longer smell James’s hair on it so he imagines he can. He imagines the lieutenant watching him playfully, the crooked smile that would appear on his lips, until the images turn sour, into gut-wrenching imaginings of what it must have been like when James had heard the news, had come home to find him gone.

Then he curls the ribbon into his fist and curses his father’s name, hoping and praying James would not appear in the empty cell beside him one day.

*

He begins to understand how things are done on the island and how its pirates operate. He throws himself into learning it all and into looking and talking like one of them. It is fascinating to him, but he has little room to spare to truly appreciate his studies. There is only the ever-growing need to become what he needs to become to fight for Thomas’s memory. He befriends an older pirate and manages to become a captain in a couple of months.

But just when he starts to believe he has acclimated to this new life he catches his reflection. Sometimes in a mirror, sometimes in a bowl of water for his face. Once in the sea. His hair is always tied back now, but he still imagines Thomas standing over his shoulder, body pressed into his, as he combs it back for him. The ache never goes away.

*

He takes the ribbon out less and less. It is precious to him, but as weeks turn into months and then finally years, he develops an odd fear. If he takes the ribbon out too much and thinks of James and never sees him again, it will all be too unbearable. So he stops ruminating on him as much. He has grown weak in both body and spirit, and realizes that if he is to survive he must do what is necessary. No more thoughts of the lieutenant or how his body felt under his touches, or how James would often wake him in the mornings with kisses over the most sensitive areas of his body. No, it is too unbearable. His mind is too weak to contain the pain of it all. So he keeps the ribbon permanently in his pocket and decides he will simply survive somehow.

*

He takes the shears in hand and quickly begins cutting it off. He’s standing in their bedroom at Miranda’s dresser. She is visiting with church friends. He is alone. He cuts at least six inches off, probably more. Too short for a ribbon. He watches as his face is transformed in the aftermath, with long locks of hair he’d had since he was seventeen covering the dresser and floor around him. He’s breathing hard, staring at the face in the mirror. McGraw is even less recognizable now. It was supposed to make him feel better. Instead his guts twist painfully as he wonders what Thomas would think. What would Thomas think about all of this? About him?

He steels himself. He dresses for the day: baldric, belt, a sword and a pistol. He looks at himself again in the mirror. Thomas is gone. Thomas is dead. He resists the urge to smash the mirror.

*

The food this month was particularly grim. They try to feed him some kind of grog. There are things crawling in it. What an absurd waste, he thinks, to have so many bodies rotting away in this building. He throws the bowl across the cell. Just fucking kill me, he yells at the guard.

That night he breaks his own rule and pulls out the ribbon. He wraps it around his knuckles and sobs.

++Epilogue++

He strokes his fingers through James’s hair, trailing a lock that has grown enough to just touch the top of James’s bare shoulder in bed. James is gazing softly at him.

“It’s almost long enough for a ribbon,” says Thomas. “Though I don’t know if this old tattered one is strong enough.”

James is silent for a moment, then replies, “It has survived this long intact.”

He runs a warm palm over Thomas’s chest, across his ribs, and to his back, hooking him and pulling him closer.

“I am sure there is plenty of strength left in it,” he finishes. It is not a hollow sentiment. There is nothing but faith glowing in those jade eyes. Thomas lets out a shaking breath and smiles. Their lips touch. James crushes Thomas to him, bowing his head into the curve of Thomas’s neck. Thomas glances over James’s head to where the ribbon lays on his night table. Tomorrow, he thinks, they will see how it looks in his hair once again.

~End~


End file.
